Josh Norem
2024-06-28 13:29:18
www.extremetech.com
Micron has announced production dates for two new facilities right here in the homeland, stating they will both be online before the end of the decade. The company has already announced new memory fab locations in Idaho and New York, but previously, their status was undetermined due to the recent downturn in the PC market. Now that the market has seemingly recovered, Micron says the facilities will be up and running in 2026 and 2028.
Micron announced plans for the new US-based fabs in 2022, but the PC market crashed in 2023, and both facilities’ futures became opaque. According to AnandTech, the company clarified its plans in a recent earnings call with investors, stating the Idaho fab would come online first in 2026. The New York fab will follow, with production beginning in 2028. However, it should be noted there’s some financial wording involved here; fiscal years start earlier than calendar years. As such, the Idaho fab is scheduled to begin producing chips sometime between September 2026 and September 2027. The New York facility is slated for a similar time frame ranging from 2027 through 2028, which could bleed into 2029.
Micron’s roadmap includes ambitious plans for next-generation memories including GDDR7, HBM4, and LPCAMM2..
Credit: Micron
Another factor influencing how soon these fabs can begin cranking out wafers is their construction progress. The facility in Idaho is already being built, while the site in New York has yet to see a shovel get dirty as it’s still in the process of finalizing permits and dealing with red tape. Micron has already been granted up to $6.1 billion in direct funding from the Biden administration for both facilities as part of the CHIPS Act. Micron says both facilities will create up to 75,000 jobs over the next 20 years, including total investments of over $125 billion.
Micron also revealed on the call that it will finally be transitioning to extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV), making it the last of the big fabs to do so, according to Tom’s Hardware. The company has stuck with deep ultraviolet (DUV) for its previous nodes (1-alpha and 1-beta) and used multi-patterning, which has been successful. It’s now embarking on a new node named 1-gamma that will use EUV instead, with the initial testing in progress at its facilities in Japan. The company expects to enter volume production with 1-gamma in calendar year 2025.
